1. Field of the Invention
The specification relates to a three-dimensional indexing protocol for determining planogram compliance. In particular, the specification relates to a system and method for indexing images of products to generate a planogram and analyze statistics associated with the planogram.
2. Description of the Background Art
A planogram generally refers to a plan or other specification of a layout or positioning of items within a pre-defined location or geographical area. For example, a planogram can be a diagram that is used in a retail environment to provide details about the layout of a store, such as a grocery store. The planogram describes a product's location in an aisle and on a shelf and the quantity of the product. Such planograms are known to be effective tools for increasing sales, managing inventory and otherwise ensuring that desired items are correctly placed to optimize profits or other parameters. However, presentation and maintenance of adequate levels of stock on shelves, racks and displays stands is a labor-intensive effort, thereby making enforcement of planograms difficult. The problems associated with manually monitoring inventory in non-retail environments, for example, warehouses, where maintenance of inventory levels is nonetheless important.
While the location and quantity of products can be manually tracked by a user, attempts are being made to automatically recognize the products. Previous attempts at recognizing products have deficiencies. For example, using radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags requires manually adding tags to all the products, which is time consuming and includes an additional hardware cost. Another method for identifying the products is based on capturing their images. However, identification can be difficult because the products are not perfectly aligned on the shelf. In addition, when capturing an image with multiple objects-of-interest, the autofocus mechanism of the camera typically focuses on one of the objects. This introduces blur on the remaining objects, which may be at slightly different distances to the camera.